How Important is Y.P. Placement ?

How Important is Placement ??
in the yellow pages ?
Does it matter where you are as long as you are not in the back ?
If you are in the front area , is that good enough or better to pay to be as far up front as you can?????????

How the YP's work here, the line ads are listed in alphabetical order and display ads are in order according to size. The same sized display ads are alphabetical order. My rep thought it's so important to be in front that he tried to convince me that I should change my business name. The first year or two I was in the YP's my business name was "Affordable........." then later I changed it to "Progressive.......". That's when he tried to convince me to change it back to "Affordable.......". I never noticed a real difference in calls. When comparing the number of calls from one name to the other, there was no difference, they equally suck. Last year I went into another book and have had much more calls.

How the YP's work here, the line ads are listed in alphabetical order and display ads are in order according to size. The same sized display ads are alphabetical order. My rep thought it's so important to be in front that he tried to convince me that I should change my business name. The first year or two I was in the YP's my business name was "Affordable........." then later I changed it to "Progressive.......". That's when he tried to convince me to change it back to "Affordable.......". I never noticed a real difference in calls. When comparing the number of calls from one name to the other, there was no difference, they equally suck. Last year I went into another book and have had much more calls.

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LOL they equally suck...I love it. I have seen more calls this year than last from the phone book. But I am also paying out the butt for it. I am tempted to drop the phone books altogether and go with direct mail. At least then I would know the calls I am getting are from an area I want, I can pick and choose when I want to do a lot of estimates, I can tailor what I want to advertise. The only thing I like about advertising in the phone book is that you get opportunities to bid on things, that you probably wouldn't normally have gotten.

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victor nor defeat.”

i wouldn't recommend spending money for putting your name under the Lawn Maintenance heading. I worked in the YP industry and my customers didn't have a whole lot of luck with that heading. On the other hand Landscape Contracters and Snow Plowing worked great....especially snow plowing.

Lawn maintenance can be done by the 12 year old neighbor kid, most people won't look in the YP for that. Landscaping takes some talent and know how, people want it done right, by a professional. Snow plowing....well, at least you have to be 16 to drive the truck, but it's more of an 'emergency/seasonal' business. If people don't have someone plowing for them already they will most likely look in the YP.

As for ad size, only get what you can afford. It is better to have a display ad as opposed to just a line listing. But being in the front is not always important. (Stats from YP) - Most people will only look at the first 5 pages of a heading before making a decision. The moral of the story, if you can afford to be in the first 5 pages...great...if not, take your money else where, you will most likely have better results.

From what I heard, if you advertise in the phone book, you HAVE to answer your phone (meaning answering / messaging services are no good).

While I do agree that my usually not answering the phone did not help, my issue was that I was not impressed by the volume...
What I also found rather irksome is other businesses calling via this listing to market me their crap, and I'd say about half the calls I got were of this nature.
After spending what I consider a lot of money, the one or two dozen calls I got left me rather disappointed...
I should've got closer to 100 calls, and all or most of them looking for me to do some work, not some telemarketing crap.

As for placement, they also tried to sell me a bigger ad because it would be closer to the front... Way I saw things, if a few thousand dollars blew, then 6 or 8 thousand would likely blow as much... That's not to say you wouldn't get more calls, but I highly doubt the ROI itself would improve.

Perhaps other folks have better luck, I've heard people brag on here before, so I suppose it is possible.